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"The most important thing is to shelter in place, stay indoors, no outdoor activity, turn the air conditioners off, keep the windows closed.” This was the instruction Torrance Mayor Patrick Furey gave to neighbors of the Exxon Mobil refinery, including the children at 14 schools, for three hours following a massive explosion at the facility Feb. 18. Four workers were injured. The force of the explosion, in a pollution control unit, was so great it registered as a magnitude 1.4 earthquake. Photographs showed a scene straight out of “Mad Max,” with heavy white ash coating twisted debris, and a blown-apart multi-story structure. For 28 hours, twin stacks shot flames...

Related "Global Warming" Articles

"The most important thing is to shelter in place, stay indoors, no outdoor activity, turn the air conditioners off, keep the windows closed.” This was the instruction Torrance Mayor Patrick Furey gave to neighbors of the Exxon Mobil refinery,...

Climate change is increasing the risk of severe drought in California by causing warm periods and dry periods to overlap more often, according to a new study.
Rising temperatures resulting from increased greenhouse gas emissions mean warm and dry...

As you may have heard, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who astonishingly enough is chairman of the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, brought a snowball to the floor of the U.S. Senate last week to debunk "all this hysteria about...

It's been dubbed both a "pause" and a "faux pause," and it's ignited debate among climate scientists and their critics.
After a period of rapid global warming throughout most of the 20th century, the pace of global temperature rise...

Alarmed by the rapid pace of climate change, a key federal science panel is urging a major research effort into high-tech schemes that could cool the planet if prevention fails, potentially including giant machines to suck greenhouse gases from the air,...

Global warming will bring the "unprecedented" risk of a decades-long mega-drought in the American Southwest and Great Plains during the second half of the century, researchers claim.
The forecast, which was published online Thursday...

California could generate much more revenue from fees on polluters than Gov. Jerry Brown expects, legislative analysts say in a report released Thursday.
Administration officials have estimated $1.7 billion in revenue from the fees by June 30, 2016,...

State lawmakers are preparing a sweeping package of bills that would fulfill several of Gov. Jerry Brown's climate change objectives by increasing California's reliance on renewable energy and alternative transportation fuels.
The proposals would also...

California Gov. Jerry Brown has done more to fight climate change than perhaps any other elected official in the United States. So what accounts for the environmentalists heckling him during speeches and planning to confront him Saturday at an Oakland...

As President Obama weighs whether to approve the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline, federal environmental officials gave him a new reason Tuesday to reject it: declining oil prices.
The Environmental Protection Agency is cautioning the White...

To maintain their dominance of energy markets, suppliers of traditional carbon-based energy have never been afraid to play hardball. Massive advertising campaigns and intense congressional lobbying, built on huge levels of campaign finance, are routine in...

Earlier this month, Pope Francis made news when he said that not only was climate change real, but it was mostly man-made. Then, last week, he said that couples do not need to breed “like rabbits” but rather should plan their families responsibly — albeit...

To the editor: I couldn't agree more that we have to address our diet in order to solve the climate problem. Studies show that animal agriculture creates more greenhouse gas emissions than the transportation sector. ("Latest climate change battle may...

Few if any of the domestic policy proposals President Obama talked about in his sixth State of the Union speech stand much chance of landing on his desk to be signed into law, but they've already begun to have an impact in another arena: shaping the...

The political clash over climate change has entered new territory that does not involve a massive oil pipeline or a subsidy for renewable energy, but a quaint federal chart that tries to nudge Americans toward a healthy diet.
The food pyramid, that...

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru, is wrapping up Friday after 12 days of negotiations on global carbon emissions.Yet, even as we work through the complexities of an international agreement, it would be a mistake to miss the...

International negotiators in Peru agreed early Sunday on some essential building blocks for a global accord to address climate change, most notably an unprecedented agreement that all countries commit to cutting heat-trapping emissions.But the contentious...

California drivers have been delighted to see gasoline prices dropping lately, down more than a dollar a gallon since early summer. It's no mystery what's causing it: Crude oil prices have fallen steeply, lowering the cost for refiners that process...

To the editor: The article reporting the record warm year in Alaska sounds like a weather story. It's not. A good chunk of Alaska is part of the Arctic, global warming's canary in the coal mine. ("Alaska's toasty temperatures in 2014 worry...

Jerry Brown, who has blown hot and cold over the years, seems to have settled down. But you never know ....
Throughout Gov. Jerry Brown's record-length political career, we've never known quite what to expect. What's real and what's not? He has blown hot...